Felice
“Well, if nothing else, you won that horrible bet you made with your brother.” Dolores was sitting on the outdoor couch, looking out across her land, a cigarette between two fingers. Back when Felice was a child, Dolores had been a hand model; it was the way she’d started her strange career. Her hands were still very beautiful, even though age was starting to swell her joints ever so slightly. Before all that, they had been a normal, middle class family, until her mother married some rich old man for his money.
The Domiano Empire had been built off of that foundation, exploding into the reality show and fashion empire the world knew today.
Felice wished none of it had ever happened. She wanted to be an anonymous girl without a string of reporters looking for her every fault. She wanted the cameras out of her face, to not be followed around by paparazzi like ducklings after their mother.
They sat in silence for a long time. Felice didn’t care that she’d won the bet with Matt. She didn’t care about the extra money coming to her; no matter how many zeroes she added to her bank account, none of it mattered.
Pierce…
But he wasn’t the father that her child needed. He’d proven himself unable to stay out of a fight for five minutes. The damned cameras had eaten it up, but Felice could feel the stress of it filling her veins. No matter how unhappy it made her, her unborn child mattered more than what her heart told her.
It was time to let Pierce Normandy go.
There was only one man who could make her feel more secure, who could give her baby the father it deserved. There was only one who could fix her reputation, too, putting her career and her show back on track this season. The market research was clear.
That man was Clay Patterson.
Sneering, Felice threw her head back against the couch, her hand automatically going to her belly. She knew she wouldn’t feel anything just yet, kicking under the surface of her skin, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from trying.
Dolores was studying her when Felice looked back over at her mother. “What is it?” she asked quietly, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
“What are you going to do now?” Dolores looked like she was aching to tell Felice exactly what to do, mostly out of habit, but was holding back to see what she’d decide on her own. Smoke spilled out of her nose and mouth.
Felice glanced down at her shoes. “I’m going to put my life and reputation back together. If the show wants Clay, we’ll give them Clay back. I’m going to build a family for the TV audience until they love me again.” She sounded a little like a robot saying it, her voice empty and lifeless. “I need to put everything back together,” she repeated, more like she was trying to convince herself rather than her mother.
Dolores frowned, taking another long pull on her smoke. The acidic smelling scent of the cigarette reminded her acutely of Pierce; it cut deep into her ribs, piercing her heart. But she ignored the pain. She had to look forward to the future.
The pain would fade soon, leaving her with nothing but wonderful memories and a quiet life with her child.
And soon, Pierce would forget her, too.
# # #
Pierce
“I’ll never get her out of my head.” Pierce took a long swig from the Jack Daniel’s bottle, drowning his sorrows in deep brown liquor. Even after a good part of the bottle, the pain of losing Felice still cut him deeply. He was bleeding out all over the dirty carpet of this shitty motel room, his heart empty of anything but pain.
“I should apologize for everything I’ve done.” But he remembered Felice’s wild outburst, her screaming at him. “How dare you start a fist fight like a criminal in my house!”
Felice was right; she didn’t need a loser like him tangling up her life. She didn’t want a criminal for a husband or a biker for a father.
After he’d woken from Clay’s sucker punch, he’d looked over to the couch, finding Clay comforting Felice as she cried. She’d let him. She’d let Clay fucking Patterson comfort her after their fight. That he had started.
It was proof that Pierce didn’t belong in Felice’s glittering, intense world. He belonged back on the east coast, no matter how much it felt like his heart was being torn from his chest. Pressing his face into his hands, Pierce could feel bile rising in his throat. “She wants a man like Clay, who will help to put her name and her life back together. At least for the crowds.”
Although he knew that Clay would never make Felice happy, he was too selfish and slimy, at least her sterling reputation would be buffed of all of its tarnish with Clay’s squeaky clean reputation. He may have been an asshole, but he was a law-abiding, charity-running asshole that the public adored.
It was pretty obvious that “the public” had never met him. If they had, they wouldn’t think such nice things about him.
All that left Pierce alone in a dirty hotel room, waiting for his flight out the next day.
“I can’t let it end like this. She deserves an apology.”
Screwing the top back on his bottle of liquor, Pierce dialed her number from the hotel’s phone. He felt dizzy with regret.
“Felice,” a familiar voice said on the other line, her voice empty. She sounded hollow, and Pierce’s soul cried out at the sound of that beautiful voice gone flat.
“Don’t hang up, Felice. I just want to — Come by my hotel, without the cameras. I want to say goodbye.”
There was silence for a long time on the other end. After a million years of nothing, her voice finally came back on the phone. “Alright, Pierce. Give me the address. I will meet you in an hour.”
After they hung up, Pierce sat down on the bed in the musty old hotel room, staring at the door and waiting.
She would come soon.